THE HISTORY OF THE UNION, AND OF THE CONSTITUTION. BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF THREE LECTURES, ON THE COLONIAL, OF AMERICAN HISTORY, WITH AN APPEN- DIX CONTAINING THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. "THE LAWS WE REVERENCE ARE OUR BRAVE FATHERS' LEGAOY." NEW YORK: VAN EVRIE, HORTON & CO., 1862. Checked TO ALL WHO LOVE THEIR COUNTRY-THEIR WHOLE COUNTRY-AND WHOSE SOULS STAND STOUTLY BY THE UNION, THE CONSTITUTION AND THE LAWS, THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS SINCERELY DEDICATED. EMMET COLLECTION Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by C. CHAUNCEY BURR, in the Clerk's Office, of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. ELECTROTYPED BY T. R. DAWLEY. ΤΟ THE READER. DANIEL WEBSTER declared that: "The quantity of liberty we possess is precisely equal to the quantity of restraint which we put upon the government. And this is the rule. If the Government is restrained from putting its hand in certain particulars upon you, to that extent you are free, and no more. All liberty, therefore, consists in putting such a restraint upon your government that it cannot touch your rights or your liberties." Those who read these lectures will, we think, be convinced that our fathers supposed they had formed a government which never could be so perverted as to destroy the liberty of the citizen. Luther Martin said in the Constitutional convention, "States may surrender their rights; but if they do, their liberties are lost." This was the idea entertained by all the patriotic founders of our Government. It will not be denied that the principles set forth in these lectures are those which have formed the political basis of the Democratic party from the time of Thos. Jefferson until now. They have been distinctly enunciated in every National Democratic platform from Jackson to Buchanan. They are still adhered to by every true Democrat. Democracy is not a shifting party policy, but a principle, as unchangeable as human rights. Policy is the invention of crafty, and often of dishonest men. Principles are the doctrines of nature, which eternally inhere in the fitness of things. They are as |